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My Installation Mess...WinXP & Redhat...pls help!

Hello every one this is my first post and of course i am a newbie to this....

Well here is my BIG INSTALLATION MESS, let me explain:

1st) my platform is WinXP and i wanted to install Red Hat as my second OS i've heard so
much about linux that i wanted to give it a try...so i bought a copy of RH 8.0 at
amazon.com for the price of $9.99 after a $20 rebate.

2nd) i did all the basics of reading the material and i assumed (dumb *ss of course) it was
going to be a walk in the park...i tried downloading partition magic as shareware to
partition my hd but at one point the download stopped, tried many times and never was
able to finish download...so i gave it up!

3rd) in the installation book it gives you a small guide in how to partition with Disk Druid &
FDISK which i dont know how to use...so i tried Disk Druid since i looked simple.

4th) i started the installation from cd-rom and so far so good until i reach the DISK SETUP
AND after that it was a total mess for me.....some how in the installation i told linux to do
and automatic partition for me and erased my WINXP because at the disk set up i had
all my available disk space...at the moment i realized that i had lost my WINXP from my
box and HERE it goes guys...I DID NOT BACK UP MY FILES i felt like the biggest and
most qualified to earn the DUMB *SS AWARD OF THE DAY! That is the first thing to do and
i did not follow up on that!

5th) now i want to reinstall win xp on by box but how am i going to partition my hd I NEED
YOUR HELP....in how to creat my dual boot!

A) should i reinstall my win xp and after that install RH or since i have RH just
reinstall my win xp? which one goes first?

B) and once i have both running which ISP supports RH to surf the web?
and where do i get my modem driver? i have a winmodem!

C) can some1 guide me how to partition with disk druid your help will be greatly
appreciated, thank you! email me pls! I will have to check from work since i have no
way of connecting....

Run FDISK.EXE: From the command prompt, enter the command "fdisk". If you have a disk large enough to warrant the use of FAT32, you will be asked if you want to enable "large disk support". Enter "Y" if you want to enable FAT32, or "N" if you do not want to enable FAT32. If you do enable this, any partitions over 500 MB that you create will be FAT32. Note that if you do not enable FAT32, you will not be able to put your entire hard disk into one partition if it is greater than 2 GB in size.

B: Select "1. Create Primary DOS Partition". FDISK will verify drive integrity. Then it will ask if you want to use the maximum available size of the disk for the primary partition and set it active. Enter "N". The system will show the size of the entire disk in MB.

C: Enter the size of the primary partition. In our example, this would mean entering "1000". The system will tell you that it has created the primary partition, and will assign it the drive letter "C:".

D: Press {Esc} to return to the FDISK menu.

E: Select "2. Set active partition". Select partition 1. FDISK will report that it has set partition 1 active.

I: When prompted, press {Enter} to select the entire remaining area of the disk for the extended DOS partition. FDISK will report that it has created the extended DOS partition.

J: Press {Esc}. FDISK will automatically prompt you to create your first logical DOS volume within the extended DOS partition.

K: Enter the size of the first logical partition (the second partition overall). In our example you would enter "800". FDISK will create the partition, label it "D:", and then say "Logical DOS Drive created, drive letters hanged or added". Don't touch anything, just wait, and FDISK will prompt you for the next volume.

L: Repeat the previous step for the remaining partitions (in our example there would be two more partitions to create, the 700 MB and 600 MB ones). When all of the partitions have been created, FDISK will report All available space in the Extended DOS Partition is assigned to logical drives".

"and once i have both running which ISP supports RH to surf the web?
and where do i get my modem driver? i have a winmodem!"

Yes Winmodems don't work in Linux theyre junk/crap they use the cpu to
do everything and slow system performance your better off replacing your
PCI card with a real modem the reason why your Vendor ships them is all
related to the lower cost and there cheapness they don't have the same parts
and the vendor knows that most people won't open there pc cases or
understand the difference yes there are Linux drivers for them
but it's far in between re:'lucent', 'pctel', Conexant" or "Lucent-Agere Lt"
chipsets. Ok what does work? any external modem with a serial cable
the only external modem that may give people problems are USB modems
alot of them only work for Windows XP or Windows2000/98 so you
have to read the box carefully and ask your computer guy if it's a Win Modem.

Ive just completed my first linux install that was a dual boot with Windows XP with NTFS. Mandrake 9.1 has the ability to non destructively resize ntfs partitions at install time. Lilo was able to set it up to boot correctly and everything is great. If you are intent on using Red Hat 8 with ntfs, try a third party partitioning utility like partition magic.